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A girl I went to high school with died last week, after a decade of a degenerative disease. I can’t remember if I liked her or not; I actually can’t remember much about high school at all. I flipped through about fifty Facebook profiles, the voyeur’s virtual reunion. Does anyone every pull my profile? Doubtful. Looking through the pictures, there was an entire world in that small town that I was oblivious to, which was probably oblivious to me, neither of us at fault. I think, though, I can generally surmise the trajectories of most of the people I skimmed through – because they still live in that town, married people that we all knew, and started having kids a few years ago. A lot of them went into the family business, or work for places in town that I grew up going to. The world turned.

My own profile is deliberately trimmed, probably boring, unclear. I remembered this place, where you’re reading, right now, and flipped back to it. It was much clearer. I had forgotten.

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What happened next is that LG and I landed on the West Coast, moved into a friend’s living room, made a go of it, and I’ve been living in the same place for more or less thirty-one months (albeit not in someone’s living room). This is he longest continuous stretch, ever, in any place, as an adult.

It wasn’t well planned but there were pragmatic reasons. Paperwork, money, and living out a bit of an experiment. The start was insane, moving to an expensive part of a first world country is no guarantee of success, and on arrival the market for both of our jobs was flat. I knew what we were getting into, but the come down was still tricky, as was stepping back into a world kind-of put to rest in my mind.

Eighteen months after arriving, we bought a studio, downtown. The realtor was wary we could live in a studio, but everything felt kind of right. Considering I had spent recent years living in: some semi-communes, an ancient motel strip, an unheated fishing shack, and a friend’s living room – zero concerns. A lot of people have unplanned pregnancies, this was like that, but instead of a baby, an apartment popped out a month later.

Wait, what? Is this how this ends?

Clearly not. Which is part of the reason the need to add to this repository of thoughts came up.